Remember this from Sesame Street? Click on the arrow to play...

We hope that everyone had a great Christmas. Eric and I are spending the holidays with my family in Greenville, SC. We're having a great time hanging out with family, playing with my nephew and stuffing ourselves silly with cookies and treats! I'll post some pics later this week.

There's an ass for every toilet seat.
-Ralph Rzepka a.k.a Dad

Ok, so tonight we went window shopping at Bellevue Square. Ever heard of a store called JZ Rose? Neat stuff, but once I saw the price tags I nearly choked. That ugly 5x7 brocade pillow? $395. How about the taxidermied chicken? $1700. Oh, and the frog-shaped ceramic umbrella holder? Try $15,000. Please refer to the quote above.

I can stop whining- our power was turned back on today :)

I don't know how the pioneers did it. Our power has been off for almost 4 days and we are going nuts. There was a huge windstorm on Thursday night and it knocked out electricity throughout the Seattle metropolitan area. Our city is one of the last to have power, due to the large number of downed trees. Lousy trees.

We owe Jerry and Stacy BIG TIME- they have graciously allowed us and even the birds to stay over this weekend. Thank you for feeding us, entertaining us and for letting us use your laundry!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Friday night we decorated gingerbread cookies with Jerry and Stacy. As you can see below I'm not terribly skilled in cookie decorating.

Saturday was the 2nd annual Cortez Christmas party, complete with karaoke. Eric stepped up to sing LL Cool J's classic "Mama Said Knock You Out". He was actually pretty good.

Today we put up the tree. Bird tree, that is. We bought this as a gift to ourselves. Daisy is constantly climbing on the couch so this looked like a good solution. We also had Dim Sum for breakfast with Robin and Carol.

Our pictures are now online! Click here to check them out.

We made it back to Seattle last night. Our trip was incredible and we have a lot of photos to share with everyone. Be patient- we have over 500 to sort through! I'll start posting them this week while Eric's out of town.